Date: Thu, 5 Sep 1996 09:45:45 -0400 (EDT) From: Kenneth Merry <ken@housing1.stucen.gatech.edu> To: branson@widomaker.com (Branson Matheson) Cc: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Theo filter Message-ID: <199609051345.JAA07985@housing1.stucen.gatech.edu> In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSF.3.91.960905074830.10328A-100000@garion.hq.ferg.com> from Branson Matheson at "Sep 5, 96 07:51:50 am"
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Branson Matheson wrote... > > Umm the recent drivel from one theo@raatt ( or somsuch .. it fits ) has > basically irriatated me rather heavily. How hard would it be to patch > majordomo to check a kill file for addresses and not propegate those > pieces of mail? It probably wouldn't be too hard, in fact I think it may have been done before to majordomo@freebsd.org to block a Brazilian list or something like that. (that -hackers somehow got subscribed to) The question is, is that the right thing to do? (I won't go any further on that one since it's such a sticky topic. :) ) > We could solve alot of problems that way. Not as many as you might think... > Oh and.. Mr. theo basically challenged Mr. jordan saying that there is > nothing he could do concerning our mailing lists unless he moderated > them.. I believe he is wrong... cron jobs that send /kernel to his > address every 5 mins or so would be more than adequate. I am not > proposing that we start a war here. But I do want to see this butthead > off of our mailing lists. Be careful with that, it can easily backfire. In fact, just yesterday I firewalled out a site that had subscribed one of the users here to a large, annoying mailing list without asking. Mail to root, postmaster and list-owner, etc., didn't seem to do anything. I would imagine that quite a bit of mail is backing up there now. :) And similarly, Theo is correct as far as being able to circumvent filters... it wouldn't be too hard to forge headers, use different mail servers, etc., to get around a filter. The above firewalling trick, and filters, only stop people who aren't really determined to get through. Moderation would be the only way to stop something like that. (The addresses of the people on the list would also have to be kept 'secret', so the majordomo 'who' command would have to be disabled for that list, and the sendmail 'expn' command would have to be disabled as well. Otherwise the someone could just grab all the addresses on the list and send mail to those addresses without going through majordomo at all.) The best thing to do is probably just declare a truce, and be done with it. Both parties are probably fully capable of waging net.war against each other, but there wouldn't be much of a point IMO. Ken -- Kenneth Merry ken@ulc199.residence.gatech.edu Disclaimer: I don't speak for GTRI, GT, or Elvis.
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